Savior But Not Lord?
Then he said to them all: 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.' (Luke 9:23)
In the New Testament salvation and discipleship are so closely related as to be indivisible. They are not identical, but as with Siamese twins they are joined by a tie which can be severed only at the price of death.
Yet they are being severed in evangelical circles today. In the working creed of the average Christian salvation is held to be immediate and automatic, while discipleship is thought to be something optional which the Christian may delay indefinitely or never accept at all.
It is not uncommon to hear Christian workers urging seekers to accept Christ now and leave moral and social questions to be decided later. The notion is that obedience and discipleship are unrelated to salvation. We may be saved by believing a historic fact about Jesus Christ (that He died for our sins and rose again) and applying this to our personal situation. The whole biblical concept of Lordship and obedience is completely absent from the mind of the seeker. He needs help, and Christ is the very one, even the only one, who can furnish it, so he takes Him as his personal Savior? The idea of His Lordship is completely ignored.?
Prayer
Lord, I bow to Your lordship in all of my life. Make me fully Your disciple and a discipler of others for Your sake.
Thought
Can we receive Christ as Savior and deny His lordship over us? Surely there is room to grow in our understanding of who He is and what it means to follow Him in daily life. But can He be our Savior without being our Lord?
--By A.W. Tozer
In the New Testament salvation and discipleship are so closely related as to be indivisible. They are not identical, but as with Siamese twins they are joined by a tie which can be severed only at the price of death.
Yet they are being severed in evangelical circles today. In the working creed of the average Christian salvation is held to be immediate and automatic, while discipleship is thought to be something optional which the Christian may delay indefinitely or never accept at all.
It is not uncommon to hear Christian workers urging seekers to accept Christ now and leave moral and social questions to be decided later. The notion is that obedience and discipleship are unrelated to salvation. We may be saved by believing a historic fact about Jesus Christ (that He died for our sins and rose again) and applying this to our personal situation. The whole biblical concept of Lordship and obedience is completely absent from the mind of the seeker. He needs help, and Christ is the very one, even the only one, who can furnish it, so he takes Him as his personal Savior? The idea of His Lordship is completely ignored.?
Prayer
Lord, I bow to Your lordship in all of my life. Make me fully Your disciple and a discipler of others for Your sake.
Thought
Can we receive Christ as Savior and deny His lordship over us? Surely there is room to grow in our understanding of who He is and what it means to follow Him in daily life. But can He be our Savior without being our Lord?
--By A.W. Tozer
posted by kennyo at 9:36 AM
1 Comments:
Act 14:21 And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, and to Iconium, and to Antioch,
Act 14:22 confirming the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God.
The word discipline comes from the word disciple. At salvation we continue our discipleship. I have been disciplined by God many times and it has only been through obedience that I have been set free from my fallen nature.
Phi 2:12 So then, my beloved, even as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; Phi 2:13 for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure.
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